All Character Skill Trees Completed

Posted By: September 18, 2009

Our open source Skill Tree Graphics Project has come to fruition, with the shiniest laurels going to Muldric, who created visually-pleasing versions of all four skill trees, working from the rough versions I posted in that thread shortly after Blizzcon.

These are not actual game skill tree screenshots; Blizzard has never released those, but these are exactly accurate for all the skill names, positions, and pre-reqs as of the BlizzCon 2009 demo build. See the Monk Skills, Witch Doctor Skills, Barbarian Skills, and Wizard Skills pages in the wiki for full details about every skill and spell in the game.

Click through to read some basic info about how skill trees are organized and function in Diablo 3.

D3 Skill Trees

The trees shown at this year’s Blizzcon had considerably fewer skills listed than the Barbarian and Wizard trees did last year. All the trees this year had around 30-36 skills, while the Barbarian and Wizard had over 50 last year. Some of the missing skills became redundant when the tree design changed from 3 separate trees to one big 3-part tree, but it’s also likely that additional skills are in the game, but aren’t being shown to us yet. We do not believe this is anything near the fully final game skill listing.

All of the characters now have these big 3-in-1 trees. Any skills can be used, and the skill point prerequisites go across all of the trees. You must spend 5 points in any combination of the Tier I skills before you can put a point into any of the Tier II skills, and so on.The 3 different trees are not segregated in any way, aside from a few dependency arrows. The only point in the 3 individual trees is to provide some sort of thematic grouping for skills. There are also some passives that only boost skills in one particular tree.

Generally speaking, it’s best to think of it as one big tree with 3 parts. The only reason to use multiple skills from any one tree is because they are prereqs, or work together with the same build. Players have almost total freedom to mix and match skills as they see fit… though this, like everything else, is subject to change during further development.